In a ground-breaking study, Swedish scientists have shown that people can detect nano-scale wrinkles while running their fingers upon a seemingly smooth surface. The findings could lead such advances as touch screens for the visually impaired and other products, says one of the researchers from KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.

The study marks the first time that scientists have quantified how people feel, in terms of a physical property. One of the authors, Mark Rutland, Professor of Surface Chemistry, says that the human finger can discriminate between surfaces patterned with ridges as small as 13 nanometres in amplitude and non-patterned surfaces.

"This means that, if your finger was the size of the Earth, you could feel the difference between houses from cars," Rutland says. "That is one of the most enjoyable aspects of this research. We discovered that a human being can feel a bump corresponding to the size of a very large molecule."

Occam's razor can leave a scar, but it can remove the cancer so often caused by the poison of liars and imaginers.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Scientists at the University of Rochester have created a metal that is so extremely hydrophobic that the water bounces on it as if it were repelled by a magic force field. Instead of using chemical coatings they used lasers to etch a nanostructure on the metal itself. It will not wear off, like current less effective methods.

A group at NASA’s Johnson Space Center has successfully tested an electromagnetic (EM) propulsion drive in a vacuum – a major breakthrough for a multi-year international effort comprising several competing research teams. Thrust measurements of the EM Drive defy classical physics’ expectations that such a closed (microwave) cavity should be unusable for space propulsion because of the law of conservation of momentum.

Occam's razor can leave a scar, but it can remove the cancer so often caused by the poison of liars and imaginers.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

Professor Geoff Hinton, who was hired by Google two years ago to help develop intelligent operating systems, said that the company is on the brink of developing algorithms with the capacity for logic, natural conversation and even flirtation.

Although the work is at an early stage, he said there is a plausible path from the current software to a more sophisticated version that would have something approaching human-like capacity for reasoning and logic. “Basically, they’ll have common sense.”

Hinton, who is due to give a talk at the Royal Society in London on Friday, believes that the “thought vector” approach will help crack two of the central challenges in artificial intelligence: mastering natural, conversational language, and the ability to make leaps of logic.

“It’s not that far-fetched,” Hinton said. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be like a friend. I don’t see why you shouldn’t grow quite attached to them.”

Professor Geoff Hinton, who was hired by Google two years ago to help develop intelligent operating systems, said that the company is on the brink of developing algorithms with the capacity for logic, natural conversation and even flirtation.

Although the work is at an early stage, he said there is a plausible path from the current software to a more sophisticated version that would have something approaching human-like capacity for reasoning and logic. “Basically, they’ll have common sense.”

Hinton, who is due to give a talk at the Royal Society in London on Friday, believes that the “thought vector” approach will help crack two of the central challenges in artificial intelligence: mastering natural, conversational language, and the ability to make leaps of logic.

“It’s not that far-fetched,” Hinton said. “I don’t see why it shouldn’t be like a friend. I don’t see why you shouldn’t grow quite attached to them.”

A team of physicists led by Caltech's David Hsieh has discovered an unusual form of matter--not a conventional metal, insulator, or magnet, for example, but something entirely different. This phase, characterized by an unusual ordering of electrons, offers possibilities for new electronic device functionalities and could hold the solution to a long-standing mystery in condensed matter physics having to do with high-temperature superconductivity--the ability for some materials to conduct electricity without resistance, even at "high" temperatures approaching -100 degrees Celsius.

Faecal transplanting is outperforming antibiotics against severe infections. Doctors essentially take poo from a healthy person, freeze it, liquidise it in a blender, then add it to a sick person’s bowel either by a tube through the nose or via the rectum.

The method, which colonises the gut with healthy bacteria, has a 85 percent success rate against life-threatening infections such as Clostridium compared to only 20 percent for standard antibiotic treatment.

Fak.:D

Occam's razor can leave a scar, but it can remove the cancer so often caused by the poison of liars and imaginers.

Ignorant men raise questions that wise men answered a thousand years ago.

"The survey will be implemented through invasive -- though non-destructive -- scanning techniques using cosmic rays in cooperation with scientists and experts from Japan, France and Canada," Eldamaty said.

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